Ballads of a Cheechako

BALLADS OF A
&CHEECHAKOJ

ROBER.T W.

Ballads of a Cheechako

Ballads of a Cheechako

BY
ROBERT W. SERVICE

Author of
" Songs of a Sourdough "

TORONTO :
\M B
1909

WILLIAM BRIGSS *

Copyright, Canada, 1909

BY
ROBERT W. SERVICE

PS

« 537

E -7 a. B

CONTENTS

TO THE MAN OF THE HIGH NORTH., n

My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming

MEN OF THE HIGH NORTH 12

Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing;

THE BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN
LIGHTS... 15

One of the Down and Out — that's me. Stare at
me well, ay, stare!

THE BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN 29

There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike living
the life of shame,

THE BALLAD OF PIOUS PETE 39

I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God,
I did.

THE BALLAD OF BLASPHEMOUS BILL 45

I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous
Bill MacKie,

THE BALLAD OF ONE-EYED MIKE. ... 51

This is the tale that was told to me by the man with
the crystal eye,

CONTENTS

THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND 56

'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women
were far and rare,

THE BALLAD OF HARD-LUCK HENRY.. 65

Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful
crank

THE MAN FROM ELDORADO 7*

He's the man from Eldorado, and he's just arrived
in town,

MY FRIENDS 78

The man above was a murderer, the man below was
a thief;

THE PROSPECTOR 82

I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-
eight,

THE BLACK SHEEP 88

Hark to the ewe that bore him :

THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR 93

I will not wash my face;

THE WOOD-CUTTER 97

The sky is like an envelope,

THE SONG OF THE MOUTH-ORGAN. . . . 101

I'm a homely little bit of tin and bone;
8

CONTENTS

THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT 105

Gold! We leapt from our benches. Gold! We
sprang from our stools.

THE BALLAD OF GUM-BOOT BEN 114

He was an old prospector with a vision bleared and
dim.

CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE. .119

In the little Crimson Manual it's written plain and
clear

LOST 129

"Black is the sky, but the land is white —

L'ENVOI 136

We talked of yesteryears, of trails and treasure,

TO THE MAN OF THE HIGH NORTH

My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming
I've drifted, silver -sailed, on seas of dream,

Hearing afar the bells of Elfland chiming,
Seeing the groves of Arcadie a gleam.

I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices
From peak snow-diademed to regal star;

Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices,
The pregnant voices of the Things That Are.

The Here, the Now, the vast Forlorn around us;

The gold-delirium, the ferine strife;
The lusts that lure us on, the hates that hound us;

Our red rags in the patch-work quilt of Life.

The nameless men who nameless rivers travel,
And in strange valleys greet strange deaths alone;

The grim, intrepid ones who would unravel
The mysteries that shroud the Polar Zone.

These will I sing, and if one of you linger
Over my pages in the Long, Long Night,

And on some lone line lay a calloused finger,
Saying: "It's human-true — it hits me right;"

Then will I count this loving toil well spent;

Then will I dream awhile — content, content.

ii

MEN OF THE HIGH NORTH

Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing;

Islands of opal float on silver seas;
Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing;

Pale ports of amber, golden argosies.
Ringed all around us the proud peaks are glowing;

Fierce chiefs in council, their wigwam the sky ;
Far, far below us the big Yukon flowing,

Like threaded quicksilver, gleams to the eye.

Men of the High North, you who have known it;

You in whose hearts its splendors have abode;
Can you renounce it, can you disown it?

Can you forget it, its glory and its goad?
Where is the hardship, where is the pain of it?

Lost in the limbo of things you've forgot;
Only remain the guerdon and gain of it;

Zest of the foray, and God, how you fought!

12

MEN OF THE HIGH NORTH

You who have made good, you foreign faring;

You money magic to far lands has whirled;
Can you forget those days of vast daring,

There with your soul on the Top o' the World?
Nights when no peril could keep you awake on

Spruce boughs you spread for your couch in

the snow;
Taste all your feasts like the beans and the bacon

Fried at the camp-fire at forty below?

Can you remember your huskies all going,

Barking with joy and their brushes in air;
You in your parka, glad-eyed and glowing,

Monarch, your subjects the wolf and the bear?
Monarch, your kingdom unravisht and gleaming;

Mountains your throne, and a river your car;
Crash of a bull moose to rouse you from dreaming;

Forest your couch, and your candle a star.

You who this faint day the High North is luring

Unto her vastness, taintlessly sweet;
You who are steel-braced, straight-lipped, enduring,

Dreadless in danger and dire in defeat:
Honor the High North ever and ever,

Whether she crown you, or whether she slay;
Suffer her fury, cherish and love her —

He who would rule he must learn to obey.

13

MEN OF THE HIGH NORTH

Men of the High North, fierce mountains love you;

Proud rivers leap when you ride on their breast.
See, the austere sky, pensive above you,

Dons all her jewels to smile on your rest.
Children of Freedom, scornful of frontiers,

We who are weaklings honor your worth.
Lords of the wilderness, Princes of Pioneers,

Let's have a rouse that will ring round the
earth.

THE BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN
LIGHTS

One of the Down and Out — that's me. Stare at
me well, ay, stare!

Stare and shrink — say! you wouldn't think that
I was a millionaire.

Look at my face, it's crimped and gouged — one of
them death-mask things;

Don't seem the sort of man, do I, as might be the
pal of kings?

Slouching along in smelly rags, a bleary-eyed, no-
good bum;

A knight of the hollow needle, pard, spewed from
the sodden slum.

Look me all over from head to foot; how much
would you think I was worth?

A dollar? a dime? a nickel? Why, Tm the •wealth-
iest man on earth.

No, don't you think that I'm off my base. You'll

sing a different tune
If only you'll let me spin my yarn. Come over to

this saloon;

* 15

BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

Wet my throat — it's as dry as chalk, and seeing as

how it's you,
I'll tell the tale of a Northern trail, and so help me

God, it's true.
I'll tell of the howling wilderness and the haggard

Arctic heights,
Of a reckless vow that I made, and how / staked

the Northern Lights.

Remember the year of the Big Stampede and the

trail of Ninety-eight,
When the eyes of the world were turned to the

North, and the hearts of men elate;
Hearts of the old dare-devil breed thrilled at the

wondrous strike,
And to every man who could hold a pan came the

message, "Up and hike."
Well, I was there with the best of them, and I knew

I would not fail.
You wouldn't believe it to see me now; but wait

till you've heard my tale.

You've read of the trail of Ninety-eight, but its

woe no man may tell;
It was all of a piece and a whole yard wide, and the

name of the brand was "Hell."
We heard the call and we staked our all; we were

plungers playing blind,

16

BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

And no man cared how his neighbor fared, and no

man looked behind;
For a ruthless greed was born of need, and the

weakling went to the wall,
And a curse might avail where a prayer would fail,

and the gold lust crazed us all.

Bold were we, and they called us three the "Unholy

Trinity;"
There was Ole Olson, the sailor Swede, and the

Dago Kid and me.
We were the discards of the pack, the foreloopers

of Unrest,
Reckless spirits of fierce revolt in the ferment of

the West.

We were bound to win and we revelled in the hard-
ships of the way.
We staked our ground and our hopes were crowned,

and we hoisted out the pay.
We were rich in a day beyond our dreams, it was

gold from the grass-roots down ;
But we weren't used to such sudden wealth, and

there was the siren town.
We were crude and careless frontiersmen, with

much in us of the beast;
We could bear the famine worthily, but we lost our

heads at the feast.

17

BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

The town looked mighty bright to us, with a bunch

of dust to spend,
And nothing was half too good them days, and

everyone was our friend.
Wining meant more than mining then, and life was

a dizzy whirl,
Gambling and dropping chunks of gold down the

neck of a dance-hall girl;
Till we went clean mad, it seems to me, and we

squandered our last poke,
And we sold our claim, and we found ourselves one

bitter morning — broke.

The Dago Kid he dreamed a dream of his mother's

aunt who died —
In the dawn-light dim she came to him, and she

stood by his bedside,
And she said: "Go forth to the highest North till

a lonely trail ye find ;
Follow it far and trust your star, and fortune will

be kind."
But I jeered at him, and then there came the Sailor

Swede to me,
And he said: "I dreamed of my sister's son, who

croaked at the age of three.
From the herded dead he sneaked and said : ' Seek

you an Arctic trail;

18

BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

'Tis pale and grim by the Polar rim, but seek and

ye shall not fail.' "
And lo ! that night I too did dream of my mother's

sister's son,
And he said to me: "By the Arctic Sea there's a

treasure to be won.
Follow and follow a lone moose trail, till you come

to a valley grim,
On the slope of the lonely watershed that borders

the Polar brim."
Then I woke my pals, and soft we swore by the

mystic Silver Flail,
'Twas the hand of Fate, and to-morrow straight

we would seek the lone moose trail.

We watched the groaning ice wrench free, crash on

with a hollow din ;
Men of the wilderness were we, freed from the

taint of sin.
The mighty river snatched us up and it bore us

swift along;
The days were bright, and the morning light was

sweet with jewelled song.
We poled and lined up nameless streams, portaged

o'er hill and plain;
We burnt our boat to save the nails, and built our

boat again;

19

BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

We guessed and groped, North, ever North, with

many a twist and turn ;
We saw ablaze in the deathless days the splendid

sunsets burn.
O'er soundless lakes where the grayling makes a

rush at the clumsy fly;
By bluffs so steep that the hard-hit sheep falls

sheer from out the sky;

By lilied pools where the bull moose cools and wal-
lows in huge content;
By rocky lairs where the pig-eyed bears peered at

our tiny tent.
Through the black canyon's angry foam we

hurled to dreamy bars,
And round in a ring the dog-nosed peaks bayed to

the mocking stars.
Spring and summer and autumn went; the sky

had a tallow gleam,
Yet North and ever North we pressed to the land

of our Golden Dream.

So we came at last to a tundra vast and dark and

grim and lone;
And there was the little lone moose trail, and we

knew it for our own.
By muskeg hollow and nigger-head it wandered

endlessly ;

20

BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

Sorry of heart and sore of foot, weary men were

we.
The short-lived sun had a leaden glare and the

darkness came too soon,
And stationed there with a solemn stare was the

pinched, anaemic moon.
Silence and silvern solitude till it made you dumbly

shrink,
And you thought to hear with an outward ear the

things you thought to think.

Oh, it was wild and weird and wan, and ever in

camp o' nights
We would watch and watch the silver dance of the

mystic Northern Lights.
And soft they danced from the Polar sky and swept

in primrose haze ;
And swift they pranced with their silver feet, and

pierced with a blinding blaze.
They danced a cotillion in the sky ; they were rose

and silver shod;
It was not good for the eyes of man — 'twas a sight

for the eyes of God.
It made us mad and strange and sad, and the gold

whereof we dreamed
Was all forgot, and our only thought was of the

lights that gleamed.

21

BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

Oh, the tundra sponge it was golden brown, and
some was a bright blood-red ;

And the reindeer moss gleamed here and there like
the tombstones of the dead.

And in and out and around about the little trail
ran clear,

And we hated it with a deadly hate and we feared
with a deadly fear.

And the skies of night were alive with light, with a
throbbing, thrilling flame;

Amber and rose and violet, opal and gold it came.

It swept the sky like a giant scythe, it quivered
back to a wedge;

Argently bright, it cleft the night with a wavy
golden edge.

Pennants of silver waved and streamed, lazy ban-
ners unfurled;

Sudden splendors of sabres gleamed, lightning
javelins were hurled.

There in our awe we crouched and saw with our
wild, uplifted eyes

Charge and retire the hosts of fire in the battle-
field of the skies.

But all things come to an end at last, and the

muskeg melted away,
And frowning down to bar our path a muddle of

mountains lay.

22

BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

And a gorge sheered up in granite walls, and the

moose trail crept betwixt;
'Twas as if the earth had gaped too far and her

stony jaws were fixt.
Then the winter fell with a sudden swoop, and the

heavy clouds sagged low,
And earth and sky were blotted out in a whirl of

driving snow.

We were climbing up a glacier in the neck of a

mountain pass,
When the Dago Kid slipped down and fell into a

deep crevasse.
When we got him out one leg hung limp, and his

brow was wreathed with pain,
And he says: "'Tis badly broken, boys, and I'll

never walk again.
It's death for all if ye linger here, and that's no

cursed lie;
Go on, go on while the trail is good, and leave me

down to die."
He raved and swore, but we tended him with our

uncouth, clumsy care.
The camp-fire gleamed and he gazed and dreamed

with a fixed and curious stare.
Then all at once he grabbed my gun and he put

it to his head,
And he says: "I'll fix it for you, boys" — them are

the words he said.

23

BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

So we sewed him up in a canvas sack and we slung

him to a tree;
And the stars like needles stabbed our eyes, and

woeful men were we.
And on we went on our woeful way, wrapped in a

daze of dream,
And the Northern Lights in the crystal nights

came forth with a mystic gleam.
They danced and they danced the devil-dance over

the naked snow;
And soft they rolled like a tide upshoaled with a

ceaseless ebb and flow.
They rippled green with a wondrous sheen, they

fluttered out like a fan ;
They spread with a blaze of rose-pink rays never

yet seen of man.
They writhed like a brood of angry snakes, hissing

and sulphur pale;
Then swift they changed to a dragon vast, lashing

a cloven tail.

It seemed to us, as we gazed aloft with an ever-
lasting stare,
The sky was a pit of bale and dread, and a monster

revelled there.
I

We climbed the rise of a hog-back range that was

desolate and drear,
When the Sailor Swede had a crazy fit, and he got

to talking queer.

24

t

BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

He talked of his home in Oregon and the peach

trees all in bloom,
And the fern head-high, and the topaz sky, and the

forest's scented gloom.
He talked of the sins of his misspent life, and then

he seemed to brood,
And I watched him there like a fox a hare, for I

knew it was not good.
And sure enough in the dim dawn-light I missed

him from the tent,
And a fresh trail broke through the crusted snow,

and I knew not where it went.
But I followed it o'er the seamless waste, and I

found him at shut of day,
Naked there as a new-born babe — so I left him

where he lay.

Day after day was sinister, and I fought fierce-eyed

despair,
And I clung to life, and I struggled on, I knew not

why nor where.
I packed my grub in short relays, and I cowered

down in my tent,
And the world around was purged of sound like a

frozen continent.
Day after day was dark as death, but ever and

ever at nights,
With a brilliancy that grew and grew, blazed up

the Northern Lights.

25

BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

They rolled around with a soundless sound like

softly bruised silk;
They poured into the bowl of the sky with the

gentle flow of milk.
In eager, pulsing violet their wheeling chariots

came,
Or they poised above the Polar rim like a coronal

of flame.
From depths of darkness fathomless their lancing

rays were hurled,
Like the all-combining search-lights of the navies

of the world.

There on the roof-pole of the world as one be-
witched I gazed,
And howled and grovelled like a beast as the awful

splendors blazed.
My eyes were seared, yet thralled I peered through

the parka hood nigh blind ;
But I staggered on to the lights that shone, and

never I looked behind.

There is a mountain round and low that lies by

the Polar rim,
And I climbed its height in a whirl of light, and I

peered o'er its jagged brim;
And there in a crater deep and vast, ungained,

unguessed of men,
The mystery of the Arctic world was flashed into

my ken.

26

BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

For there these poor dim eyes of mine beheld the

sight of sights —
That hollow ring was the source and spring of the

mystic Northern Lights.

Then I staked that place from crown to base, and

I hit the homeward trail.
Ah, God! it was good, though my eyes were blurred,

and I crawled like a sickly snail.
In that vast white world where the silent sky

communes with the silent snow,
In hunger and cold and misery I wandered to and

fro.
But the Lord took pity on my pain, and He led me

to the sea,
And some ice-bound whalers heard my moan, and

they fed and sheltered me.
They fed the feeble scarecrow thing that stumbled

out of the wild
With the ravaged face of a mask of death and the

wandering wits of a child —
A craven, cowering bag of bones that once had been

a man.
They tended me and they brought me back to the

world, and here I am.

Some say that the Northern Lights are the glare
of the Arctic ice and snow;

27

BALLAD OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

And some that it's electricity, and nobody seems

to know.
But I'll tell you now — and if I lie, may my lips be

stricken dumb —
It's a mine, a mine of the precious stuff that men

call radium.
It's a million dollars a pound, they say, and there's

tons and tons in sight.
You can see it gleam in a golden stream in the

solitudes of night.
And it's mine, all mine — and say! if you have a

hundred plunks to spare,
I'll let you have the chance of your life, I'll sell

you a quarter share.
You turn it down? Well, I'll make it ten, seeing

as you are my friend.
Nothing doing? Say! don't be hard — have you

got a dollar to lend?
Just a dollar to help me out, I know you'll treat me

white;
I'll do as much for you some day . . . God

bless you, sir; good-night,

28

THE BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX
SKIN

There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike

living the life of shame,
When unto them in the Long, Long Night came

the man-who-had-no-name;
Bearing his prize of a black fox pelt, out of the Wild

he came.

His cheeks were blanched as the flume-head foam
when the brown spring freshets flow;

Deep in their dark, sin-calcined pits were his sombre
eyes aglow;

They knew him far for the fitful man who spat
forth blood on the snow.

" Did ever you see such a skin? " quoth he; " there's

nought in the world so fine —
Such fullness of fur as black as the night, such

lustre, such size, such shine;
It's life to a one-lunged man like me; it's London,

it's women, it's wine.

29

BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN

"The Moose-hides called it the devil-fox, and

swore that no man could kill;
That he who hunted it, soon or late, must surely

suffer some ill;
But I laughed at them and their old squaw-tales.

Ha! Ha! I'm laughing still.

"For look ye, the skin — it's as smooth as sin, and

black as the core of the Pit.
By gun or by trap, whatever the hap, I swore I

would capture it;
By star and by star afield and afar, I hunted and

would not quit.

"For the devil-fox, it was swift and sly, and it

seemed to fleer at me;
I would wake in fright by the camp-fire light,

hearing its evil glee;
Into my dream its eyes would gleam, and its

shadow would I see.

"It sniffed and ran from the ptarmigan I had

poisoned to excess;
Unharmed it sped from my wrathful lead ('twas

as if I shot by guess) ;
Yet it came by night in the stark moonlight to

mock at my weariness.

30

BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN

"I tracked it up where the mountains hunch like

the vertebrae of the world;
I tracked it down to the death-still pits where the

avalanche is hurled;
From the glooms to the sacerdotal snows, where the

carded clouds are curled.

"From the vastitudes where the world protrudes
through clouds like seas up-shoaled,

I held its track till it led me back to the land I had
left of old—

The land I had looted many moons. I was weary
and sick and cold.

" I was sick, soul-sick, of the futile chase, and there

and then I swore
The foul fiend fox might scathless go, for I would

hunt no more;
Then I rubbed mine eyes in a vast surprise — it

stood by my cabin door.

"A rifle raised in the wraith-like gloom, and a

vengeful shot that sped;
A howl that would thrill a cream -faced corpse —

and the demon fox lay dead. . . .
Yet there was never a sign of wound, and never a

drop he bled.

BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN

"So that was the end of the great black fox, and

here is the prize I've won;
And now for a drink to cheer me up — I've mushed

since the early sun;
We'll drink a toast to the sorry ghost of the fox

whose race is run."

II.

Now Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike, bad as

the worst were they;
In their road-house down by the river-trail they

waited and watched for prey;
With wine and song they joyed night long, and

they slept like swine by day.

For things were done in the Midnight Sun that no

tongue will ever tell;
And men there be who walk earth-free, but whose

names are writ in hell —
Are writ in flames with the guilty names of Fournier

and Labelle.

Put not your trust in a poke of dust would ye sleep

the sleep of sin ;
For there be those who would rob your clothes ere

yet the dawn comes in;
And a prize likewise in a woman's eyes is a peerless

black fox skin.

32

BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN

Put your faith in the mountain cat if you lie within

his lair;
Trust the fangs of the mother-wolf, and the claws

of the lead-ripped bear ;
But oh, of the wiles and the gold-tooth smiles of a

dance-hall wench beware!

Wherefore it was beyond all laws that lusts of man

restrain,
A man drank deep and sank to sleep never to wake

again;
And the Yukon swallowed through a hole the cold

corpse of the slain.

in.

The black fox skin a shadow cast from the roof nigh

to the floor;
And sleek it seemed and soft it gleamed, and the

woman stroked it o'er;
And the man stood by with a brooding eye, and

gnashed his teeth and swore.

When thieves and thugs fall out and fight there's

fell arrears to pay;
And soon or late sin meets its fate, and so it fell

one day
That Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike fanged

up like dogs at bay.

33

BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN

"The skin is mine, all mine," she cried; "I did the
deed alone."

"It's share and share with a guilt-yoked pair," he
hissed in a pregnant tone;

And so they snarled like malamutes over a mil-
dewed bone.

And so they fought, by fear untaught, till haply it

befell
One dawn of day she slipped away to Dawson town

to sell
The fruit of sin, this black fox skin that had made

their lives a hell.

She slipped away as still he lay, she clutched the

wondrous fur;
Her pulses beat, her foot was fleet, her fear was as

a spur;
She laughed with glee, she did not see him rise

and follow her.

The bluffs uprear and grimly peer far over Dawson

town;
They see its lights a blaze o' nights and harshly

they look down;
They mock the plan and plot of man with grim,

ironic frown.

34

BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN

The trail was steep; 'twas at the time when swiftly

sinks the snow;
All honey-combed, the river ice was rotting down

below ;
The river chafed beneath its rind with many a

mighty throe.

And up the swift and oozy drift a woman climbed

in fear,
Clutching to her a black fox fur as if she held it

dear;
And hard she pressed it to her breast — then Windy

Ike drew near.

She made no moan — her heart was stone — she read

his smiling face,
And like a dream flashed all her life's dark horror

and disgrace;
A moment only — with a snarl he hurled her into

space.

She rolled for nigh an hundred feet; she bounded

like a ball;
From crag to crag she carromed down through snow

and timber fall; . . .
A hole gaped in the river ice; the spray flashed —

that was all.

35

BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN

A bird sang for the joy of spring, so piercing sweet

and frail;
And blinding bright the land was dight in gay and

glittering mail;
And with a wondrous black fox skin a man slid

down the trail.

IV. ,

A wedge-faced man there was who ran along the

river bank,
Who stumbled through each drift and slough, and

ever slipped and sank,
And ever cursed his Maker's name, and ever

"hooch" he drank.

He travelled like a hunted thing, hard harried, sore
distrest ;

The old grandmother moon crept out from her
cloud-quilted nest;

The aged mountains mocked at him in their prim-
eval rest.

Grim shadows diapered the snow; the air was

strangely mild;
The valley's girth was dumb with mirth, the

laughter of the wild ;
The still, sardonic laughter of an ogre o'er a child.

36

BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN

The river writhed beneath the ice; it groaned like

one in pain,
And yawning chasms opened wide, and closed and

yawned again;
And sheets of silver heaved on high until they split

in twain.

^From out the road-house by the trail they saw a

man afar
Make for the narrow river-reach where the swift

cross-currents are;
Where, frail and worn, the ice is torn and the angry

waters jar.

But they did not see him crash and sink into the

icy flow;
They did not see him clinging there, gripped by

the undertow,
Clawing with bleeding finger-nails at the jagged

ice and snow.

They found a note beside the hole where he had

stumbled in:
"Here met his fate by evil luck a man who lived

in sin,
And to the one who loves me least I leave this

black fox skin."

37

BALLAD OF THE BLACK FOX SKIN

And strange it is; for, though they searched the

river all around,
No trace or sign of black fox skin was ever after

found ;
Though one man said he saw the tread of hoofs

deep in the ground.

THE BALLAD OF PIOUS PETE

"The North has got him" — Yukonism.

I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to

God, I did.
I grieved for his fate, and early and late I watched

over him like a kid.
I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse in every way

that I could;
I swore to prevail ; I camped on his trail ; I plotted

and planned for his good.
By day and by night I strove in men's sight to

gather him into the fold,
With precept and prayer, with hope and despair, in

hunger and hardship and cold.
I followed him into Gehennas of sin, I sat where

the sirens sit ;
In the shade of the Pole, for the sake of his soul, I

strove with the powers of the Pit.
I shadowed him down to the scrofulous town; I

dragged him from dissolute brawls;
But I killed the galoot when he started to shoot

electricity iitfo my walls.

39

THE BALLAD OF PIOUS PETE

God knows what I did he should seek to be rid of

one who would save him from shame.
God knows what I bore that night when he swore

and bade me make tracks from his claim.
I started to tell of the horrors of hell, when sudden

his eyes lit like coals;
And " Chuck it," says he, "don't persecute me with

your cant and your saving of souls."
I'll swear I was mild as I'd be with a child, but he

called me the son of a slut;
And, grabbing his gun with a leap and a run, he

threatened my face with the butt.
So what could I do (I leave it to you) ? With curses

he harried me forth;
Then he was alone, and I was alone, and over us

menaced the North.

Our cabins were near; I could see, I could hear;

but between us there rippled the creek;
And all summer through, with a rancor that grew,

he would pass me and never would speak.
Then a shuddery breath like the coming of Death

crept down from the peaks far away;
The water was still; the twilight was chill; the sky

was a tatter of gray.
Swift came the Big Cold, and opal and gold the

lights of the witches arose;

40

THE BALLAD OF PIOUS PETE

The frost-tyrant clinched, and the valley was

cinched by the stark and cadaverous snows.
The trees were like lace where the star-beams

could chase, each leaf was a jewel agleam.
The soft white hush lapped the Northland and

wrapped us round in a crystalline dream ;
So still I could hear quite loud in my ear the swish

of the pinions of time;
So bright I could see, as plain as could be, the wings

of God's angels ashine.

As I read in the Book I would oftentimes look to

that cabin just over the creek.
Ah me, it was sad and evil and bad, two neighbors

who never would speak!
I knew that full well like a devil in hell he was

hatching out, early and late,
A system to bear through the frost-spangled air

the warm, crimson waves of his hate.
I only could peer and shudder and fear — 'twas

ever so ghastly and still;
But I knew over there in his lonely despair he was

plotting me terrible ill.
I knew that he nursed a malice accurst, like the

blast of a winnowing flame;
I pleaded aloud for a shield, for a shroud — Oht

God! then calamity came.

THE BALLAD OF PIOUS PETE

Mad! If I'm mad then you too are mad; but it's

all in the point of view.
If you'd looked at them things gallivantin' on

wings, all purple and green and blue;
If you'd noticed them twist, as they mounted and

hissed like scorpions dim in the dark;
If you'd seen them rebound with a horrible sound,

and spitefully spitting a spark;
If you'd watched // with dread, as it hissed by your

bed, that thing with the feelers that crawls —
You'd have settled the brute that attempted to

shoot electricity into your walls.

Oh, some they were blue, and they slithered right
through; they were silent and squashy and
round;

And some they were green ; they were wriggly and
lean; they writhed with so hateful a sound.

My blood seemed to freeze; I fell on my knees;
my face was a white splash of dread.

Oh, the Green and the Blue, they were gruesome to
view ; but the worst of them all were the Red.

They came through the door, they came through
the floor, they came through the moss-
creviced logs.

They were savage and dire; they were whiskered
with fire ; they bickered like malamute dogs.

42

THE BALLAD OF PIOUS PETE

They ravined in rings like iniquitous things; they
gulped down the Green and the Blue.

I crinkled with fear whene'er they drew near, and
nearer and nearer they drew.

And then came the crown of Horror's grim crown,
the monster so loathsomely red.

Each eye was a pin that shot out and in, as, squid-
like, it oozed to my bed ;

So softly it crept with feelers that swept and quiv-
ered like fine copper wire;

Its belly was white with a sulphurous light, its
jaws were a -drooling with fire.

It came and it came; I could breathe of its flame,
but never a wink could I look.

I thrust in its maw the Fount of the Law; I fended
it off with the Book.

I was weak — oh, so weak — but I thrilled at its
shriek, as wildly it fled in the night;

And deathlike I lay till the dawn of the day. (Was
ever so welcome the light?)

I loaded my gun at the rise of the sun; to his cabin

so softly I slunk.
My neighbor was there in the frost-freighted air,

all wrapped in a robe in his bunk.

43

THE BALLAD OF PIOUS PETE

It muffled his moans; it outlined his bones, as

feebly he twisted about;
His gums were so black, and his lips seemed to

crack, and his teeth all were loosening out.
'Twas a death's head that peered through the

tangle of beard; 'twas a face I will never

forget;
Sunk eyes full of woe, and they troubled me so

with their pleadings and anguish, and yet
As I rested my gaze in a misty amaze on the

scurvy-degenerate wreck,
I thought of the Things with the dragon-fly wings,

then laid I my gun on his neck.
He gave out a cry that was faint as a sigh, like a

perishing malamute,
And he says unto me, "I'm converted," says he;

"for Christ's sake, Peter, don't shoot!"

They're taking me out with an escort about, and

under a sergeant's care;
I am humbled indeed, for I'm 'cuffed to a Swede

that thinks he's a millionaire.
But it's all Gospel true what I'm telling to you —

up there where the Shadow falls —
That I settled Sam Noot when he started to shoot

electricity into my walls,

44

THE BALLAD OF BLASPHEMOUS
BILL

I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous

Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the manner of

death he die —
Whether he die in the light o' day or under the

peak-faced moon;
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks

or patent shoon ;
On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift

or draw;
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche,

fang or claw;
By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence,

hooch or lead —
I swore on the Book I would follow and look till I

found my tomb less dead.

For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind *
was mighty sot

On a dinky patch with flowers and grass in a civil-
ized bone-yard lot.

45

BALLAD OF BLASPHEMOUS BILL

And where he died or how he died, it didn't matter
a damn

So long as he had a grave with frills and a tomb-
stone "epigram."

So I promised him, and he paid the price in good
cheechako coin

(Which the same I blowed in that very night down
in the Tenderloin).

Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: "Here
lies poor Bill MacKie,"

And I hung it up on my cabin wall and I waited
for Bill to die.

Years passed away, and at last one day came a

squaw with a story strange,
Of a long-deserted line of traps 'way back of the

Bighorn range;
Of a little hut by the great divide, and a white man

stiff and still,
Lying there by his lonesome self, and I figured it

must be Bill.
So I thought of the contract I'd made with him,

and I took down from the shelf
The swell black box with the silver plate he'd picked

out for hisself;
And I packed it full of grub and "hooch," and I

slung it on the sleigh;
Then I harnessed up my team of dogs and was off

at dawn of day.

BALLAD OF BLASPHEMOUS BILL

You know what it's like in the Yukon wild when

it's sixty-nine below;
When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads

through the erust of the pale blue snow;
When the pine-trees crack like little guns in the

silence of the wood,
And the icicles hang down like tusks under the

parka hood;
When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off, and

the sky is weirdly lit,
And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns like a

red-hot spit;

When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-
fiend stalks to kill —
Well, it was just like that that day when I set out

to look for Bill.

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me down

on every hand,
As I blundered blind with a trail to find through

that blank and bitter land ;
Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its

grim heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that only

the sourdough knows!
North by the compass, North I pressed; river and

peak and plain
Passed like a dream I slept to lose and I waked to

dream again.

47

BALLAD OF BLASPHEMOUS BILL

River and plain and mighty peak — and who could

stand imawed ?
As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed

at the foot of the throne of God.
North, aye, North, through a land accurst, shunned

by the scouring brutes,
And all I heard was my own harsh word and the

whine of the malamutes,
Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built in the side

of a hill,
And I burst in the door, and there on the floor,

frozen to death, lay Bill.

Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each

smoke-grimed wall;
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming

over all;
Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest, glittering

ice in his hair,
Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his glassy

stare ;
Hard as a log and trussed like a frog, with his arms

and legs outspread.
I gazed at the coffin I'd brought for him, and I

gazed at the gruesome dead,
And at last I spoke: "Bill liked his joke; but still,

goldarn his eyes,
A man had ought to consider his mates in the way

he goes and dies."

BALLAD OF BLASPHEMOUS BILL

Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow

of the Pole,
With a little coffin six by three and a grief you

can't control?
Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that looks

at you with a grin,
And that seems to say: "You may try all day, but

you'll never jam me in?"
I'm not a man of the quitting kind, but I never

felt so blue
As I sat there gazing at that stiff and studying

what I'd do.
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs that

were nosing round about,
And I lit a roaring fire in the stove, and I started

to thaw Bill out.

Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days, but

it didn't seem no good ;
His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, as if they

was made of wood.
Till at last I said: "It ain't no use — he's froze too

hard to thaw;
He's obstinate, and he won't lie straight, so I guess

I got to — saw.1'
So I sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs, and I laid

him snug and straight
In the little coffin he picked hisself, with the dinky

silver plate;

49

BALLAD OF BLASPHEMOUS BILL

And I came nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed

him safely down;
Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and

I started back to town.

So I buried him as the contract was in a narrow

grave and deep,
And there he's waiting the Great Clean-up, when

the Judgment sluice-heads sweep;
And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the light of

the Midnight Sun,
And sometimes I wonder if they was, the awful

things I done.
And as I sit and the parson talks, expounding of

the Law,
I often think of poor old Bill — and how hard he was

to saw.

THE BALLAD OF ONE-EYED MIKE

This is the tale that was told to me by the man with

the crystal eye,
As I smoked my pipe in the camp-fire light, and the

Glories swept the sky\
As the Northlights gleamed and curved and streamed,

and the bottle of "hooch" was dry.

A man once aimed that my life be shamed, and

wrought me a deatliiy wrong;
I vowed one day I would well repay, but the heft

of his hate was strong.
He thonged me East and he thonged me West ; he

harried me back and forth,
Till I fled in fright from his peerless spite to the

bleak, bald-headed North.

And there I lay, and for many a day I hatched plan

after plan,
For a golden haul of the wherewithal to crush and

to kill my man ;

51

THE BALLAD OF ONE-EYED MIKE

And there I strove, and there I clove through the
drift of icy streams;

And there I fought, and there I sought for the pay-
streak of my dreams.

So twenty years, with their hopes and fears and

smiles and tears and such,
Went by and left me long bereft of hope of the

Midas touch;
About as fat as a chancel rat, and lo! despite my

will,
In the weary fight I had clean lost sight of the man

I sought to kill.

'Twas so far away, that evil day when I prayed

the Prince of Gloom
For the savage strength and the sullen length of

life to work his doom.
Nor sign nor word had I seen or heard, and it

happed so long ago;
My youth was gone and my memory wan, and I

willed it even so.

It fell one night in the waning light by the Yukon's

oily flow, v

I smoked and sat as I marvelled at the sky's port-

winey glow;

52

THE BALLAD OF ONE-EYED MIKE

Till it paled away to an absinthe gray, and the

river seemed to shrink,
All wobbly flakes and wriggling snakes and goblin

eyes a-wink.

'Twas weird to see and it 'wildered me in a queer,

hypnotic dream,
Till I saw a spot like an inky blot come floating

down the stream ;
It bobbed and swung; it sheered and hung; it

romped round in a ring;
It seemed to play in a tricksome way; it sure was

a merry thing.

In freakish flights strange oily lights came fluttering

round its head,
Like butterflies of a monster size — then I knew it

for the Dead.
Its face was rubbed and slicked and scrubbed as

smooth as a shaven pate;
In the silver snakes that the water makes it gleamed

like a dinner-plate.

It gurgled near, and clear and clear and large and

large it grew;
It stood upright in a ring of light and it looked me

through and through.

53

THE BALLAD OF ONE-EYED MIKE

It weltered round with a woozy sound, and ere I

could retreat,
With the witless roll of a sodden soul it wantoned

to my feet.

And here I swear by this Cross I wear, I heard that

"floater" say:
"I am the man from whom you ran, the man you

sought to slay.
That you may note and gaze and gloat, and say

' Revenge is sweet,'
In the grit and grime of the river's slime I am

rotting at your feet.

"The ill we rue we must e'en undo, though it rive

us bone from bone;
So it came about that I sought you out, for I prayed

I might atone.
I did you wrong, and for long and long I sought

where you might live;
And now you're found, though I'm dead and

drowned, I beg you to forgive,"

So sad it seemed, and its cheek-bones gleamed,
and its fingers flicked the shore;

And it lapped and lay in a weary way, and its hands
met to implore;

54

THE BALLAD OF ONE-EYED MIKE

That I gently said: "Poor, restless dead, I would

never work you woe;
Though the wrong you rue you can ne'er undo,

I forgave you long ago."

Then, wonder -wise, I rubbed my eyes and I woke
from a horrid dream.

The moon rode high in the naked sky, and some-
thing bobbed in the stream.

It held my sight in a patch of light, and then it
sheered from the shore;

It dipped and sank by a hollow bank, and I never
saw it more.

This was the tale he told to me, that man so warped

and gray,
Ere he slept and dreamed, and the camp-fire gleamed

in his eye in a wolfish way —
That crystal eye that raked the sky in the weird

Auroral ray.

55

THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND

'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where

women were far and rare,
Tellus, the smith, had taken to wife a maiden

amazingly fair;
Tellus, the brawny worker in iron, hairy and heavy

of hand,
Saw her and loved her and bore her away from the

tribe of a Southern land ;
Deeming her worthy to queen his home and mother

him little ones,
That the name of Tellus, the master smith, might

live in his stalwart sons.

Now there was little of law in the land, and evil

doings were rife,
And every man who joyed in his home guarded the

fame of his wife;
For there were those of the silver tongue and the

honeyed art to beguile,
Who would cozen the heart from a woman's breast

and damn her soul with a smile.

56

THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND

And there were women too quick to heed a look

or a whispered word,
And once in a while a man was slain, and the ire

of the King was stirred ;
So far and wide he proclaimed his wrath, and this

was the law he willed:
"That whosoever killeth a man, even shall he be

killed.'1

Now Tellus, the smith, he trusted his wife; his

heart was empty of fear.
High on the hill was the gleam of their hearth, a

beacon of love and cheer.
High on the hill they builded their bower, where

the broom and the bracken meet;
Under a grave of oaks it was, hushed and drowsily

sweet.
Here he enshrined her, his dearest saint, his idol,

the light of his eye;

Her kisses rested upon his lips as brushes a butterfly.
The weight of her arms around his neck was light

as the thistle down ;
And sweetly she studied to win his smile, and gently

she mocked his frown.

And when at the close of the dusty day his clang-
orous toil was done,
She hastened to meet him down the way all lit by

the amber sun.

57

THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND

Their dove-cot gleamed in the golden light, a

temple of stainless love;
Like the hanging cup of a big blue flower was the

topaz sky above.
The roses and lilies yearned to her, as swift through

their throng she pressed;
A little white, fragile, fluttering thing that lay like

a child on his breast.
Then the heart of Tellus, the smith, was proud, and

sang for the joy of life,
And there in the bronzing summertide he thanked

the gods for his wife.

Now there was one called Philo, a scribe, a man of

exquisite grace,
Carved like the god Apollo in limb, fair as Adonis

in face;
Eager and winning of manner, full of such radiant

charm,
Womenkind fought for his favor and loved to their

uttermost harm.
Such was his craft and his knowledge, such was his

skill at the game,
Never was woman could flout him, so be he plotted

her shame.
And so he drank deep of pleasure, and then it fell

on a day
He gazed on the wife of Tellus and marked her

out for his prey.

58

THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND

Tellus, the smith, was merry, and the time of the

year it was June,
So he said to his stalwart helpers: "Shut down

the forge at noon.
Go ye and joy in the sunshine, rest in the coolth of

the grove,

Drift on the dreamy river, every man with his love."
Then to himself: "Oh, Beloved, sweet will be your

surprise ;
To-day will we sport like children, laugh in each

other's eyes;
Weave gay garlands of poppies, crown each other

with flowers,
Pull plump carp from the lilies, rifle the ferny

bowers.
To-day with feasting and gladness the wine of

Cyprus will flow;

To-day is the day we were wedded only a twelve-
month ago."

The larks trilled high in the heavens ; his heart was

lyric with joy ;
He plucked a posy of lilies; he sped like a love-sick

boy.
He stole up the velvety pathway — his cottage was

sunsteeped and still;
Vines honeysuckled the window; softly he peeped

o'er the sill.

59

THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND

The lilies dropped from his fingers; devils were

choking his breath;
Rigid with horror, he stiffened; ghastly his face

was as death.
Like a nun whose faith in the Virgin is met with

a prurient jibe,
He shrank- — 'twas the wife of his bosom in the

arms of Philo, the scribe.

Tellus went back to his smithy; he reeled like a
drunken man;

His heart was riven with anguish; his brain was
brooding a plan.

Straight to his anvil he hurried ; started his furnace
aglow;

Heated his iron and shaped it with savage and
masterful blow.

Sparks showered over and round him ; swiftly under
his hand

There at last it was finished — a hideous and in-
famous Brand.

That night the wife of his bosom, the light of joy

in her eyes,
Kissed him with words of rapture; but he knew

that her words were lies.
Never was she so beguiling, never so merry of

speech

60

THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND

(For passion ripens a woman as the sunshine

ripens a peach).
He clenched his teeth into silence; he yielded up

to her lure,
Though he knew that her breasts were heaving

from the fire of her paramour.
"To-morrow," he said, " to-morrow" — he wove

her hair in a strand,
Twisted it round his fingers and smiled as he

thought of the Brand.

The morrow was come, and Tellus swiftly stole up

the hill.
Butterflies drowsed in the noon-heat; coverts were

sunsteeped and still.
Softly he padded the pathway unto the porch, and

within
Heard he the low laugh of dalliance, heard he the

rapture of sin.
Knew he her eyes were mystic with light that no

man should see,
No man kindle and joy in, no man on earth save

he.

And never for him would it kindle. The blood-
lust surged in his brain ;
Through the senseless stone could he see them,

wanton and warily fain.

61

THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND

Horrible! Heaven he sought for, gained it and
gloried and fell —

Oh, it was sudden — headlong into the nether-
most hell.

Was this he, Tellus, this marble? Tellus

not dreaming a dream?
Ah! sharp-edged as a javelin, was that a woman's

scream?
Was it a door that shattered, shell-like, under his

blow?
Was it his saint, that strumpet, dishevelled and

cowering low?
Was it her lover, that wild thing, that twisted and

gouged and tore?
Was it a man he was crushing, whose head he beat

on the floor?
Laughing the while at its weakness, till sudden

he stayed his hand —
Through the red ring of his madness flamed the

thought of the Brand.

Then bound he the naked Philo with thongs that

cut in the flesh,
And the wife of his bosom, fear-frantic, he gagged

with a silken mesh,

62

THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND

Choking her screams into silence; bound her down

by the hair;
Dragged her lover unto her under her frenzied

stare.
In the heat of the hearth-fire embers he heated the

hideous Brand;
Twisting her fingers open, he forced its haft in her

hand.
He pressed it downward and downward; she felt

the living flesh sear;
She saw the throe of her lover ; she heard the scream

of his fear.
Once, twice and thrice he forced her, heedless of

prayer and shriek —
Once on the forehead of Philo, twice in the soft of

his cheek.
Then (for the thing was finished) he said to the

woman: "See
How you have branded your lover! Now will I

let him go free."
He severed the thongs that bound him, laughing:

" Revenge is sweet,"
And Philo, sobbing in anguish, feebly rose to his

feet.
The man who was fair as Apollo, god-like in

woman's sight,
Hideous now as a satyr, fled to the pity of night.

THE BALLAD OF THE BRAND

Then came they before the Judgment Seat, and thus

spoke the Lord of the Land:
"He who seeketh his neighbor's wife shall suffer the

doom of the Brand.
Brutish and bold on his brow be it stamped, deep in

his cheek let it sear,
That every man may look on his shame, and shudder

and sicken and fear.
He shall hear their mock in the market-place, their

•fleering jibe at the feast;
He shall seek the caves and the shroud of night, and

the fellowship of the beast.
Outcast forever from homes of men, far and far shall

he roam.
Such be the doom, sadder than death, of him who

shameth a home."
\

64

THE BALLAD OF HARD-LUCK
HENRY

Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful

crank
That's staked out nigh three hundred claims, and

every one a blank;
That's followed every fool stampede, and seen the

rise and fall
Of camps where men got gold in chunks and he got

none at all;
That's prospected a bit of ground and sold it for

a song
To see it yield a fortune to some fool that came

along;
That's sunk a dozen bed-rock holes, and not a speck

in sight, ,
Yet sees them take a million from the claims to

left and right?
Now aren't things like that enough to drive a man

to booze?
But Hard-Luck Smith was hoodoo-proof — he knew

the way to lose.

65

BALLAD OF HARD LUCK HENRY

'Twas in the fall of nineteen four — leap-year I've

heard them say —
When Hard-Luck came to Hunker Creek and took

a hillside lay.
And lo ! as if to make amends for all the futile

past,

Late in the year he struck it rich, the real pay-
streak at last.
The riffles of his sluicing-box were choked with

speckled earth,
And night and day he worked that lay for all that

he was worth.
And when in chill December's gloom his lucky

lease expired,
He found that he had made a stake as big as he

desired.

One day while meditating on the waywardness of

fate,

He felt the ache of lonely man to find a fitting mate ;
A petticoated pard to cheer his solitary life,
A woman with soft, soothing ways, a confidant, a

wife.
And while he cooked his supper on his little Yukon

stove,
He wished that he had staked a claim in Love's

rich treasure-trove;

66

BALLAD OF HARD-LUCK HENRY

When suddenly he paused and held aloft a Yukon

egg,
For there in pencilled letters was the magic name

of Peg.

You know these Yukon eggs of ours — some pink,

some green, some blue —

A dollar per, assorted tints, assorted flavors too.
The supercilious cheechako might designate them

high,
But one acquires a taste for them and likes them

by-and-by.
Well, Hard-Luck Henry took this egg and held it

to the light,
And there was more faint pencilling that sorely

taxed his sight.
At last he made it out, and then the legend ran like

this —
"Will Klondike miner write to Peg, Plumhollow,

Squashville, Wis.?"

That night he got to thinking of this far-off, un-
known fair;

It seemed so sort of opportune, an answer to his
prayer.

67

BALLAD OF HARD-LUCK HENRY

She flitted sweetly through his dreams, she haunted

him by day,
She smiled through clouds of nicotine, she cheered

his weary way.
At last he yielded to the spell; his course of love

he set —
Wisconsin his objective point; his object, Margaret.

With every mile of sea and land his longing grew

and grew.
He practised all his pretty words, and these, I fear,

were few.
At last, one frosty evening, with a cold chill down

his spine,
He found himself before her house, the threshold

of the shrine.
His courage flickered to a spark, then glowed with

sudden flame —
He knocked ; he heard a welcome word ; . she came

— his goddess came.

Oh, she was fair as any flower, and huskily he spoke:
"I'm all the way from Klondike, with a mighty

heavy poke.
I'm looking for a lassie, one whose Christian name

is Peg,
Who sought a Klondike miner, and who wrote it

on an egg."

68

BALLAD OF HARD-LUCK HENRY

The lassie gazed at him a space, her cheeks grew
rosy red ;

She gazed at him with tear-bright eyes, then ten-
derly she said:

"Yes, lonely Klondike miner, it is true my name is
Peg.

It's also true I longed for you and wrote it on an

egg-
My heart went out to someone in that land of night

and cold;
But oh, I .fear that Yukon egg must have been

mighty old.
I waited long, I hoped and feared ; you should have

come before;
I've been a wedded woman now for eighteen months

or more.
I'm sorry, since you've come so far, you ain't the

one that wins;
But won't you take a step inside — /'// let you see

the twins"

THE MAN FROM ELDORADO

He's the man from Eldorado, and he's just arrived

in town,

In moccasins and oily buckskin shirt.
He's gaunt as any Indian, and pretty nigh as brown;

He's greasy, and he smells of sweat and dirt.
He sports a crop of whiskers that would shame a

healthy hog;
Hard work has racked his joints and stooped

his back;
He slops along the sidewalk followed by his yellow

dog,
But he's got a bunch of gold-dust in his sack.

He seems a little wistful as he blinks at all the

lights,

And maybe he is thinking of his claim
And the dark and dwarfish cabin where he lay and

dreamed at nights,
(Thank God, he'll never see the place again!)

70

THE MAN FROM ELDORADO

Where he lived on tinned tomatoes, beef embalmed

and sourdough bread,

On rusty beans and bacon furred with mould;
His stomach's out of kilter and his system full of

lead,
But it's over, and his poke is full of gold.

He has panted at the windlass, he has loaded in the

drift,

He has pounded at the face of oozy clay;
He has taxed himself to sickness, dark and damp

and double shift,

He has labored like a demon night and day.
And now, praise God, it's over, and he seems to

breathe again

Of new-mown hay, the warm, wet, friendly loam ;
He sees a snowy orchard in a green and dimpling

plain,
And a little vine-clad cottage, and it's — Home.

n.

He's the man from Eldorado, and he's had a bite

and sup,

And he's met in with a drouthy friend or two;
He's cached away his gold-dust, but he's sort of

bucking up,
So he's kept enough to-night to see him through.

THE MAN FROM ELDORADO

His eye is bright and genial, his tongue no longer
lags;

His heart is brimming o'er with joy and mirth;
He may be far from savory, he may be clad in rags,

But to-night he feels as if he owns the earth.

Says he: "Boys, here is where the shaggy North

and I will shake ;

I thought I'd never manage to get free.
I kept on making misses; but at last I've got my

stake ;

There's no more thawing frozen muck for me.
I am going to God's Country, where I'll live the

simple life;

I'll buy a bit of land and make a start;
I'll carve a little homestead, and I'll win a little

wife,
And raise ten little kids to cheer my heart."

They signified their sympathy by crowding to the

bar;

They bellied up three deep and drank his health.
He shed a radiant smile around and smoked a rank

cigar;

They wished him honor, happiness and wealth.
They drank unto his wife to be — that unsuspecting

maid;
They drank unto his children half a score;

72

THE MAN FROM ELDORADO

And when they got through drinking, very ten-
derly they laid
The man from Eldorado on the floor.

in.

He's the man from Eldorado, and he's only start-
ing in

To cultivate a thousand -dollar jag.
His poke is full of gold-dust and his heart is full of

sin,

And he's dancing with a girl called Muckluck Mag.
She's as light as any fairy ; she's as pretty as a peach ;

She's mistress of the witchcraft to beguile;
There's sunshine in her manner, there is music in

her speech,
And there's concentrated honey in her smile.

Oh, the fever of the dance-hall and the glitter and

the shine,

The beauty, and the jewels, and the whirl,
The madness of the music, the rapture of the wine,

The languorous allurement of a girl!
She is like a lost madonna; he is gaunt, unkempt

and grim;

But she fondles him and gazes in his eyes;
Her kisses seek his heavy lips, and soon it seems

to him
He has staked a little claim in Paradise.

73

THE MAN FROM ELDORADO

"Who's for a juicy two-step?" cries the master of

the floor;

The music throbs with soft, seductive beat.
There's glitter, gilt and gladness; there are pretty

girls galore;

There's a woolly man with moccasins on feet.
They know they've got him going; he is buying

wine for all;

They crowd around as buzzards at a feast,
Then when his poke is empty they boost him from

the hall,
And spurn him in the gutter like a beast.

He's the man from Eldorado, and he's painting

red the town ;

Behind he leaves a trail of yellow dust;
In a whirl of senseless riot he is ramping up and

down;
There's nothing checks his madness and his

lust.
And soon the word is passed around — it travels

like a flame;

They fight to clutch his hand and call him friend,
The chevaliers of lost repute, the dames of sorry

fame;
Then comes the grim awakening — the end.

74

THE MAN FROM ELDORADO

IV.

He's the man from Eldorado, and he gives a grand

affair;

There's feasting, dancing, wine without re-
straint.
The smooth Beau Brummels of the bar, the faro

men, are there;

The tinhorns and purveyors of red paint;
The sleek and painted women, their predacious

eyes aglow —

Sure Klondike City never saw the like;
Then Muckluck Mag proposed the toast, "The giver

of the show,
The livest sport that ever hit the pike."

The "live one" rises to his feet; he stammers to

reply —

And then there comes before his muddled brain
A vision of green vastitudes beneath an April

sky,

And clover pastures drenched with silver rain.
He knows that it can never be, that he is down and

out;

Life leers at him with foul and fetid breath ;
And then amid the revelry, the song and cheer and

shout,
He suddenly grows grim and cold as death.

75

THE MAN FROM ELDORADO

He grips the table tensely, and he says: "Dear

friends of mine,

I've let you dip your fingers in my purse;
I've crammed you at my table, and I've drowned

you in my wine,

And I've little left to give you but — my curse.
I've failed supremely in my plans; it's rather late

to whine;

My poke is mighty weasened up and small.
I thank you each for coming here; the happiness

is mine —
And now, you thieves and harlots, take it all."

He twists the thong from off his poke; he swings

it o'er his head;

The nuggets fall around their feet like grain.
They rattle over roof and wall; they scatter, roll

and spread;

The dust is like a shower of golden rain.
The guests a moment stand aghast, then grovel on

the floor;
They fight, and snarl, and claw, like beasts of

prey;
And then, as everybody grabbed and everybody

swore,
The man from Eldorado slipped away.

THE MAN FROM ELDORADO

v.

He's the man from Eldorado, and they found him

stiff and dead,

Half covered by the freezing ooze and dirt.
A clotted Colt was in his hand, a hole was in his

head,

And he wore an old and oily buckskin shirt.
His eyes were fixed and horrible, as one who hails

the end ;

The frost had set him rigid as a log;
And there, half lying on his breast, his last and only

friend,
There crouched and whined a mangy yellow dog.

77

MY FRIENDS

The man above was a murderer, the man below

was a thief;
And I lay there in the bunk between, ailing beyond

belief;
A weary armful of skin and bone, wasted with pain

and grief.

My feet were froze, and the lifeless toes were purple

and green and gray;
The little flesh that clung to my bones, you could

punch it in holes like clay;
The skin on my gums was a sullen black, and slowly

peeling away.

I was sure enough in a direful fix, and often I won-
dered why

They did not take the chance that was left and
leave me alone to die,

Or finish me off with a dose of dope — so utterly
lost was I.

78

MY FRIENDS

But no; they brewed me the green-spruce tea, and

nursed me there like a child;
And the homicide he was good to me, and bathed

my sores and smiled;
And the thief he starved that I might be fed, and

his eyes were kind and mild.

Yet they were woefully wicked men, and often at

night in pain
I heard the murderer speak of his deed and dream

it over again;
I heard the poor thief sorrowing for the dead self

he had slain.

I'll never forget that bitter dawn, so evil, askew
and gray,

When they wrapped me round in the skins of
beasts and they bore me to a sleigh,

And we started out with the nearest post an hun-
dred miles away.

I'll never forget the trail they broke, with its tense,
unuttered woe;

And the crunch, crunch, crunch as their snow-
shoes sank through the crust of the hollow
snow;

And my breath would fail, and every beat of my
heart was like a blow.

79

MY FRIENDS

And oftentimes I would die the death, yet wake

up to life anew;
The sun would be all ablaze on the waste, and the

sky a blighting blue,
And the tears would rise in my snow-blind eyes

and furrow my cheeks like dew.

And the camps we made when their strength out-
played and the day was pinched and wan;

And oh, the joy of that blessed halt, and how I
did dread the dawn;

And how I hated the weary men who rose and
dragged me on.

And oh, how I begged to rest, to rest — the snow

was so sweet a shroud ;
And oh, how I cried when they urged me on, cried

and cursed them aloud;
Yet on they strained, all racked and pained, and

sorely their backs were bowed.

And then it was all like a lurid dream, and I prayed

for a swift release
From the ruthless ones who would not leave me to

die alone in peace;
Till I wakened up and I found myself at the post

of the Mounted Police.

80

MY FRIENDS

And there was my friend the murderer, and there

was my friend the thief,
With bracelets of steel around their wrists, and

wicked beyond belief:
But when they come to God's judgment seat —

may I be allowed the brief.

81

THE PROSPECTOR

I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-
eight,

A-purpose to revisit the old claim.
I kept thinking mighty sadly of the funny ways of

Fate,
And the lads who once were with me in the

game.
Poor boys, they're down-and-outers, and there's

scarcely one to-day
Can show a dozen colors in his poke;
And me, I'm still prospecting, old and battered,

gaunt and gray,

And I'm looking for a grub-stake, and I'm
broke.

I strolled up old Bonanza. The same old moon

looked down;

The same old landmarks seemed to yearn to me;
But the cabins all were silent, and the flat, once like

a town,
Was mighty still and lonesome-like to see.

82

THE PROSPECTOR

There were piles and piles of tailings where we
toiled with pick and pan,

And turning round a bend I heard a roar,
And there a giant gold-ship of the very newest plan

Was tearing chunks of pay-dirt from the shore.

It wallowed in its water-bed; it burrowed, heaved

and swung;

It gnawed its way ahead with grunts and sighs ;
Its bill of fare was rock and sand; the tailings

were its dung;

It glared around with fierce electric eyes.
Full fifty buckets crammed its maw; it bellowed

out for more;

It looked like some great monster in the gloom.
With two to feed its sateless greed, it worked for

seven score,

And I sighed: "Ah, old-time miner, here's your
doom!"

The idle windlass turns to rust ; the sagging sluice-
box falls;

The holes you digged are water to the brim ;
Your little sod-roofed cabins with the snugly moss-
chinked walls

Are deathly now and mouldering and dim.
The battle-field is silent where of old you fought

it out;
The claims you fiercely won are lost and sold;

83

THE PROSPECTOR

But there's a little army that they'll never put to

rout —
The men who simply live to seek the gold.

The men who can't remember when they learned

to swing a pack,

Or in what lawless land the quest began;
The solitary seeker with his grub-stake on his back,

The restless buccaneer of pick and pan.
On the mesas of the Southland, on the tundras of

the North,
You will find us, changed in face but still the

same;
And it isn't need, it isn't greed that sends us faring

forth—
It's the fever, it's the glory of the game.

For once you've panned the speckled sand and seen

the bonny dust,

Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell;
It's little else you care about; you go because you

must,

And you feel that you could follow it to hell.
You'd follow it in hunger, and you'd follow it in

cold;
You'd follow it in solitude and pain;

THE PROSPECTOR

And when you're stiff and battened down let some-
one whisper "Gold,"
You're lief to rise and follow it again.

Yet look you, if I find the stuff it's just like so much

dirt;

I fling it to the four winds like a child.
It's wine and painted women and the things that

do me hurt,

Till I crawl back, beggared, broken, to the Wild.
Till I crawl back, sapped and sodden, to my grub-
stake and my tent —
There's a city, there's an army (hear them

shout) .
There's the gold in millions, millions, but I haven't

got a cent;
And oh, it's me, it's me that found it out.

It was my dream that made it good, my dream

that made me go

To lands of dread and death disprized of man;
But oh, I've known a glory that their hearts will

never know,

When I picked the first big nugget from my pan.
It's still my dream, my dauntless dream, that drives

me forth once more
To seek and starve and suffer in the Vaat;

85

THE PROSPECTOR

That heaps my heart with eager hope, that glim-
mers on before —
My dream that will uplift me to the last.

Perhaps I am stark crazy, but there's none of you

too sane;

It's just a little matter of degree.
My hobby is to hunt out gold; it's fortressed in

my brain ;

It's life and love and wife and home to me.
And I'll strike it, yes, I'll strike it; I've a hunch

I cannot fail;

I've a vision, I've a prompting, I've a call;
I hear the hoarse stampeding of an army on my

trail,
To the last, the greatest gold camp of them all.

Beyond the shark-tooth ranges sawing savage at

the sky

There's a lowering land no white man ever struck;
There's gold, there's gold in millions, and I'll find

it if I die,

And I'm going there once more to try my luck.
Maybe I'll fail — what matter? It's a mandate, it's

a vow;

And when in lands of dreariness and dread
You seek the last lone frontier, far beyond your

frontiers now,

You will find the old prospector, silent, dead.
86

THE PROSPECTOR

You will find a tattered tent-pole with a ragged robe

below it;

You will find a rusted gold-pan on the sod;
You will find the claim Tm seeking, with my bones

as stakes to show it;
But I've sought the last Recorder, and He's — God.

THE BLACK SHEEP

" The aristocratic ne'er-do-well in Canada frequently
finds his way into the ranks of the Royal North-West
Mounted Police." — Extract.

Hark to the ewe that bore him:

" What has muddied the strain?
Never his brothers before him

Showed the hint of a stain."
Hark to the tups and wethers;

Hark to the old gray ram:
" We're all of us white, but he's black as night,

And he'll never be worth a damn."

I'm up on the bally wood-pile at the back of the

barracks yard;
"A damned disgrace to the force, sir," with a

comrade standing guard;
Making the bluff I'm busy, doing my six months

hard.

88

THE BLACK SHEEP

"Six months hard and dismissed, sir." Isn't that

rather hell?
And all because of the liquor laws and the wiles

of a native belle —
Some "hooch" I gave to a siwash brave who swore

that he wouldn't tell.

At least they say that I did it. It's so in the town

report.

All that I can recall is a night of revel and sport,
When I woke with a "head" in the guard-room,

and they dragged me sick into court.

And the O. C. said: "You are guilty," and I said

never a word ;
For, hang it, you see I couldn't — I didn't know what

had occurred,
And, under the circumstances, denial would be

absurd.

But the one that cooked my bacon was Grubbe, of

the City Patrol.
He fagged for my room at Eton, and didn't I devil

his soul I
And now he is getting even, landing me down in

the hole.

If

THE BLACK SHEEP

Plugging away on the wood -pile; doing chores

round the square.
There goes an officer's lady — gives me a haughty

stare —
Me that's an earl's own nephew — that is the

hardest to bear.

To think of the poor old mater awaiting her prodi-
gal son.

Tho' I broke her heart with my folly, I was always
the white-haired one.

(That fatted calf that they're cooking will surely
be overdone.)

I'll go back and yarn to the Bishop; I'll dance

with the village belle;
I'll hand round tea to the ladies, and everything

will be well.
Where I have been won't matter; what I have

seen I won't tell.

I'll soar to their ken like a comet. They ~ see me

with never a stain ;
But will they reform me? — far from it. We pay

for our pleasure with pain;
But the dog will return to his vomit, the hog to

his wallow again.

THE BLACK SHEEP

I've chewed on the rind of creation, and bitter I've
tasted the same ;

Stacked up against hell and damnation, I've man-
aged to stay in the game;

I've had my moments of sorrow; I've had my
seasons of shame.

That's past; when one's nature's a cracked one,

it's too jolly hard to mend.
So long as the road is level, so long as I've cash to

spend,
I'm bound to go to the devil, and it's all the same

in the end

The bugle is sounding for stables; the men troop

off through the gloom;
An orderly laying the tables sings in the bright

mess-room.
(I'll ;vash in the prison bucket, and brush with the

prison broom.)

I'll lie in my cell and listen; I'll wish that I couldn't

hear
The laugh and the chaff of the fellows swigging the

canteen beer;
The nasal tone of the gramophone playing "The

Bandolier."

91

THE BLACK SHEEP

And it seems to me, though it's misty, that night

of the flowing bowl,
That the man who potlatched the whiskey and

landed me into the hole
Was Grubbe, that unmerciful bounder, Grubbe, of the

City Patrol

THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR

I will not wash my face;

I will not brush my hair;
I "pig" around the place —

There's nobody to care.
Nothing but rock and tree;

Nothing but wood and stone
Oh, God, it's hell to be

Alone, alone, alone!

Snow-peaks and deep-gashed draws

Corral me in a ring.
I feel as if I was

The only living thing
On all this blighted earth;

And so I frowst and shrink,
And crouching by my hearth

I hear the thoughts I think.

I think of all I miss —
The boys I used to know;

The girls I used to kiss;
The coin I used to blow;

93

THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR

The bars I used to haunt;

The racket and the row;
The beers I didn't want

(I wish I had 'em now).

Day after day the same,

Only a little worse ;
No one to grouch or blame —

Oh, for a loving curse!
Oh, in the night I fear,

Haunted by nameless things,
Just for a voice to cheer,

Just for a hand that clings!

Faintly as from a star

Voices come o'er the line;
Voices of ghosts afar,

Not in this world of mine;
Lives in whose loom I grope;

Words in whose weft I hear
Eager the thrill of hope,

Awful the chill of fear.

I'm thinking out aloud;

I reckon that is bad;
(The snow is like a shroud) —

Maybe I'm going mad.

94

THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR

Say! wouldn't that be tough?

This awful hush that hugs
And chokes one is enough

To make a man go "bugs."

There's not a thing to do;

I cannot sleep at night;
No wonder I'm so blue;

Oh, for a friendly fight!
The din and rush of strife;

A music-hall aglow;
A crowd, a city, life —

Dear God, I miss it so!

Here, you have moped enough!

Brace up and play the game!
But say, it's awful tough —

Day after day the same
(I've said that twice, I bet).

Well, there's not much to say.
I wish I had a pet,

Or something I could play.

Cheer up ! don't get so glum
And sick of everything;

The worst is yet to come;
God help you till the Spring.

95

THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR

God shield you from the Fear;

Teach you to laugh, not moan.
Ha! ha! it sounds so queer —

Alone, alone, alone!

THE WOOD-CUTTER

The sky is like an envelope,

One of those blue official things;
And, sealing it, to mock our hope,

The moon, a silver wafer, clings.
What shall we find when death gives leave
To read — our sentence or reprieve?

I'm holding it down on God's scrap-pile, up on the

fag-end of earth;
O'er me a menace of mountains, a river that

grits at my feet;
Face to face with my soul-self, weighing my life

at its worth ;

Wondering what I was made for, here in my
last retreat.

Last! Ah, yes, it's the finish. Have ever you heard

a man cry?

(Sobs that rake him and rend him, right from
the base of the chest.)

97

THE WOOD-CUTTER

That's how I've cried, oh, so often; and now

that my tears are dry,

I sit in the desolate quiet and wait for the
infinite Rest.

Rest! Well, it's restful around me; it's quiet clean

to the core.
The mountains pose in their ermine, in golden

the hills are clad;
The big, blue, silt-freighted Yukon seethes by my

cabin door,

And I think it's only the river that keeps me
from going mad.

By day it's a ruthless monster, a callous, insatiate

thing,
With oily bubble and eddy, with sudden swirling

of breast;

By night it's a writhing Titan, sullenly murmuring,
Ever and ever goaded, and ever crying for rest.

It cries for its human tribute, but me it will never

drown.
I've learned the lore of my river; my river

obeys me well.
I hew and I launch my cord wood, and raft it to

Dawson town,

Where wood means wine and women, and,
incidentally, hell.

THE WOOD-CUTTER

Hell and the anguish thereafter. Here as I sit

alone

I'd give the life I have left me to lighten some
load of care:

(The bitterest part of the bitter is being denied to
atone ;

Lips that have mocked at Heaven lend them-
selves ill to prayer.)

Impotent as a beetle pierced on the needle of Fate;
A wretch in a cosmic death-cell, peaks for my prison

bars;
' Whelmed by a world stupendous, lonely and listless

I wait,

Drowned in a sea of silence, strewn with confetti
of stars.

See! from far up the valley a rapier pierces the

night,
The white search-ray of a steamer. Swiftly,

serenely it nears;
A proud, white, alien presence, a glittering galley

of light,

Confident-poised, triumphant, freighted with
hopes and fears.

I look as one looks on a vision ; I see it pulsating by;
I glimpse joy-radiant faces; I hear the thresh
of the wheel.

99

THE WOOD GUTTER

Hoof-like my heart beats a moment; then silence

swoops from the sky.

Darkness is piled upon darkness. God only
knows how I feel.

Maybe you've seen me sometimes; maybe you've

pitied me then —
The lonely waif of the wood-camp, here by my

cabin door.

Some day you'll look and see not; futile and out-
cast of men,
I shall be far from your pity, resting forevermore.

My life was a problem in ciphers, a weary and

profitless sum.
Slipshod and stupid I worked it, dazed by negation

and doubt.
Ciphers the total confronts me. Oh, Death, with thy

moistened thumb,
Stoop like a petulant schoolboy, wipe me forever out!

IOO

THE SONG OF THE MOUTH-ORGAN

(With apologies to the singer of the " Song of the Banjo.")

I'm a homely little bit of tin and bone;

I'm beloved by the Legion of the Lost;
I haven't got a "vox humana" tone,

And a dime or two will satisfy my cost.
I don't attempt your high-falutin' flights;

I am more or less uncertain on the key;
But I tell you, boys, there's lots and lots of nights

When you've taken mighty comfort out of me.

I weigh an ounce or two, and I'm so small

You can pack me in the pocket of your vest;
And when at night so wearily you crawl

Into your bunk and stretch your limbs to rest,
You take me out and play me soft and low,

The simple songs that trouble your heartstrings;
The tunes you used to fancy long ago,

Before you made a rotten mess of things.

101

THE SONG OF THE MOUTH-ORGAN

Then a dreamy look will come into your eyes,

And you break off in the middle of a note;
And then, with just the dreariest of sighs,

You drop me in the pocket of your coat.
But somehow I have bucked you up a bit;

And, as you turn around and face the wall,
You don't feel quite so spineless and unfit —

You're not so bad a fellow after all.

Do you recollect the bitter Arctic night;

Your camp beside the canyon on the trail;
Your tent a tiny square of orange light;

The moon above consumptive-like and pale;
Your supper cooked, your little stove aglow;

You tired, but snug and happy as a child?
Then 'twas "Turkey in the Straw" till your lips
were nearly raw,

And you hurled your bold defiance at the Wild.

Do you recollect the flashing, lashing pain;

The gulf of humid blackness overhead;
The lightning making rapiers of the rain;

The cattle-horns like candles of the dead
You sitting on your bronco there alone,

In your slicker, saddle-sore and sick with cold?
Do you think the silent herd did not hear "The
Mocking Bird,"

Or relish "Silver Threads among the Gold?"

1 02

THE SONG OF THE MOUTH-ORGAN

Do you recollect the wild Magellan coast;

The head-winds and the icy, roaring seas;
The nights you thought that everything was lost;

The days you toiled in water to your knees;
The frozen ratlines shrieking in the gale;

The hissing steeps and gulfs of livid foam:
When you cheered your messmates nine with " Ben
Bolt" and "Clementine,"

And "Dixie Land" and "Seeing Nellie Home?"

Let the jammy banjo voice the Younger Son,

Who waits for his remittance to arrive;
I represent the grimy, gritty one,

Who sweats his bones to keep himself alive;
Who's up against the real thing from his birth ;

Whose heritage is hard and bitter toil;
I voice the weary, smeary ones of earth,

The helots of the sea and of the soil.

I'm the Steinway of strange mischief and mischance;

I'm the Stradivarius of blank defeat;
In the down- world, when the devil leads the dance,

I am simply and symbolically meet;
I'm the irrepressive spirit of mankind;

I'm the small boy playing knuckle down with

Death;

At the end of all things known, where God's rubbish-
heap is thrown,

I shrill impudent triumph at a breath.
103

THE SONG OF THE MOUTH-ORGAN

I'm a humble little bit of tin and horn;

I'm a byword, I'm a plaything, I'm a jest;
The virtuoso looks on me with scorn ;

But there's times when I am better than the

best.
Ask the stoker and the sailor of the sea;

Ask the mucker and the hewer of the pine;
Ask the herder of the plain, ask the gleaner of the
grain—

There's a lowly, loving kingdom — and it's mine.

104

THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT

Gold! We leapt from our benches. Gold: We
sprang from our stools.

Gold! We wheeled in the furrow, fired with the
faith of fools.

Fearless, unfound, unfitted, far from the night and
the cold,

Heard we the clarion summons, followed the master-
lure — Gold !

Men from the sands of the Sunland ; men from the
woods of the West;

Men from the farms and the cities, into the North-
land we pressed.

Gray beards and striplings and women, good men
and bad men and bold,

Leaving our homes and our loved ones, crying
exultantly— "Gold!"

Never was seen sueh an army, pitiful, futile, unfit ;
Never was seen such a spirit, manifold courage and
grit;

105

THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT

Never has been such a cohort under one banner

unrolled
As surged to the ragged -edged Arctic, urged by

the arch-tempter — Gold.

"Farewell!" we cried to our dearests; little we

cared for their tears.
" Farewell!" we cried to the humdrum and the yoke

of the hireling years;
Just like a pack of school-boys, and the big crowd

cheered us good-bye.
Never were hearts so uplifted, never were hopes so

high.

The spectral shores flitted past us, and every whirl

of the screw
Hurled us nearer to fortune, and ever we planned

what we'd do —
Do with the gold when we got it — big, shiny

nuggets like plums,
There in the sand of the river, gouging it out with

our thumbs.

And one man wanted a castle, another a racing
stud;

A third would cruise in a palace yacht like a red-
necked prince of blood.

1 06

THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT

And so we dreamed and we vaunted, millionaires

to a man,
Leaping to wealth in our visions long ere the trail

began.

II.

We landed in wind-swept Skagway. We joined

the weltering mass,
Clamoring over their outfits, waiting to climb the

Pass.
We tightened our girths and our pack-straps; we

linked on the Human Chain,
Struggling up to the summit, where every step was

a pain.

Gone was the joy of our faces, grim and haggard

and pale;
The heedless mirth of the shipboard was changed

to the care of the trail.
We flung ourselves in the struggle, packing our

grub in relays,
Step by step to the summit in the bale of the winter

days.

Floundering deep in the sump-holes, stumbling out

again;
Crying with cold and weakness, crazy with fear and

pain.

107

THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT

Then from the depths of our travail, ere our spirits

were broke,
Grim, tenacious and savage, the lust of the trail

awoke.

"Klondike or bust!" rang the slogan; every man

for his own.
Oh, how we flogged the horses, staggering skin and

bone!
Oh, how we cursed their weakness, anguish they

could not tell,
Breaking their hearts in our passion, lashing them

on till they fell!

For grub meant gold to our thinking, and all that
could walk must pack;

The sheep for the shambles stumbled, each with a
load on its back;

And even the swine were burdened, and grunted
and squealed and rolled,

And men went mad in the moment, huskily clam-
oring "Gold!"

Oh, we were brutes and devils, goaded by lust and
fear!

Our eyes were strained to the summit; the weak-
lings dropped to the rear,

1 08

THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT

Falling in heaps by the trail-side, heart-broken,

limp and wan;
But the gaps closed up in an instant, and heedless

the chain went on.

Never will I forget it, there on the mountain face,

Antlike, men with their burdens, clinging in icy
space;

Dogged, determined and dauntless, cruel and cal-
lous and cold,

Cursing, blaspheming, reviling, and ever that battle-
cry— "Gold!"

Thus toiled we, the army of fortune, in hunger and

hope and despair,
Till glacier, mountain and forest vanished, and,

radiantly fair,
There at our feet lay Lake Bennett, and down to

its welcome we ran:
The trail of the land was over, the trail of the water

began.

in.

We built our boats and we launched them. Never

has been such a fleet;

A packing-case for a bottom, a mackinaw for a sheet.
Shapeless, grotesque, lopsided, flimsy, makeshift

and crude,
Each man after his fashion builded as best he could.

109

THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT

Each man worked like a demon, as prow to rudder

we raced ;
The winds of the Wild cried "Hurry!" the voice of

the waters, "Haste!"
We hated those driving before us; we dreaded

those pressing behind;
We cursed the slow current that bore us; we prayed

to the God of the wind.

Spring! and the hillsides flourished, vivid in jew-
elled green;

Spring! and our hearts' blood nourished envy and
hatred and spleen.

Little cared we for the Spring-birth; much cared
we to get on —

Stake in the Great White Channel, stake ere the
best be gone.

The greed of the gold possessed us; pity and love

were forgot;
Covetous visions obsessed us ; brother with brother

fought.
Partner with partner wrangled, each one claiming

his due;
Wrangled and halved their outfits, sawing their

boats in two.

no

THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT

Thuswise we voyaged Lake Bennett, Tagish,

then Windy Arm,
Sinister, savage and baleful, boding us hate and

harm.
Many a scow was shattered there on that iron

shore ;
Many a heart was broken straining at sweep and

oar.

We roused Lake Marsh with a chorus, we drifted
many a mile;

There was the canyon before us — cave-like its
dark defile;

The shores swept faster and faster; the river nar-
rowed to wrath;

Waters that hissed disaster reared upright in our
path.

Beneath us the green tumult churning, above us
the cavernous gloom ;

Around us, swift twisting and turning, the black,
sullen walls of a tomb.

We spun like a chip in a mill-race ; our hearts ham-
mered under the test;

Then — oh, the relief on each chill face! — we soared
into sunlight and rest.

in

THE TRAIL OF NINETY EIGHT

Hand sought for hand on the instant. Cried we,

"Our troubles are o'er!"
Then, like a rumble of thunder, heard we a canorous

roar.
Leaping and boiling and seething, saw we a cauldron

af ume ;
There was the rage of the rapids, there was the

menace of doom.

The river springs like a racer, sweeps through a

gash in the rock;
Buts at the boulder-ribbed bottom, staggers and

rears at the shock;
Leaps like a terrified monster, writhes in its fury

and pain;
Then with the crash of a demon springs to the

onset again.

Dared we that ravening terror; heard we its din

in our ears;
Called on the Gods of our fathers, juggled forlorn

with our fears;
Sank to our waists in its fury, tossed to the sky

like a fleece;
Then, when our dread was the greatest, crashed

into safety and peace.

112

THE TRAIL OF NINETY-EIGHT

But what of the others that followed, losing their

boats by the score?
Well could we see them and hear them, strung

down that desolate shore.
What of the poor souls that perished? Little of

them shall be said —
On to the Golden Valley, pause not to bury the

dead.

Then there were days of drifting, breezes soft as a

sigh;
Night trailed her robe of jewels over the floor of

the sky.
The moonlit stream was a python, silver, sinuous,

vast,'
That writhed on a shroud of velvet — well, it was

done at last.

There were the tents of Dawson, there the scar of

the slide;
Swiftly we poled o'er the shallows, swiftly leapt

o'er the side.
Fires fringed the mouth of Bonanza ; sunset gilded

the dome;
The test of the trail was over — thank God, thank

God, we were Home!

THE BALLAD OF GUM-BOOT BEN

He was an old prospector with a vision bleared and

dim.
He asked me for a grubstake, and the same I gave

to him.
He hinted of a hidden trove, and when I made so

bold
To question his veracity, this is the tale he told.

"I do not seek the copper streak, nor yet the

yellow dust;
I am not fain for sake of gain to irk the frozen

crust ;
Let fellows gross find gilded dross, far other is my

mark ;
Oh, gentle youth, this is the truth — I go to seek

the Ark.

"I prospected the Pelly bed, I prospected the

White;
The Nordenscold for love of gold I piked from

morn till night;

114

THE BALLAD OF GUM-BOOT BEN

Afar and near for many a year I led the wild

stampede,
Until I guessed that all my quest was vanity and

greed.

"Then came I to a land I knew no man had ever

seen,
A haggard land, forlornly spanned by mountains

lank and lean;
The nitchies said 'twas full of dread, of smoke and

fiery breath,
And no man dare put foot in there for fear of pain

and death.

"But I was made all unafraid, so, careless and alone,
Day after day I made my way into that land

unknown ;
Night after night by camp-fire light I crouched in

lonely thought;
Oh, gentle youth, this is the truth — I knew not

what I sought.

"I rose at dawn; I wandered on. 'Tis somewhat

fine and grand
To be alone and hold your own in God's vast

awesome land;

THE BALLAD OF GUM-BOOT BEN

Come woe or weal, 'tis fine to feel a hundred

miles between
The trails you dare and pathways where the feet

of men have been.

"And so it fell on me a spell of wander-lust was

cast.
The land was still and strange and chill, and

cavernous and vast;
And sad and dead, and dull as lead, the valleys

sought the snows;
And far and wide on every side the ashen peaks

arose.

"The moon was like a silent spike that pierced

the sky right through;
The small stars popped and winked and hopped

in vastitudes of blue;
And unto me for company came creatures of the

shade,
And formed in rings and whispered things that

made me half afraid.

"And strange though be, 'twas borne on me that

land had lived of old,
And men had crept and slain and slept where now

they toiled for gold ;

lit

THE BALLAD OF GUM-BOOT BEN

Through jungles dim the mammoth grim had

sought the oozy fen,
And on his track, all bent of back, had crawled the

hairy men.

"And furthermore, strange deeds of yore in this

dead place were done.
They haunted me, as wild and free I roamed from

sun to sun;
Until I came where sudden flame uplit a terraced

height,
A regnant peak that seemed to seek the coronal

of night.

"I scaled the peak; my heart was weak, yet on

and on I pressed.
Skyward I strained until I gained its dazzling

silver crest;
And there I found, with all around a world supine

and stark,
Swept clean of snow, a flat plateau, and on it

lay— the Ark.

" Yes, there, I knew, by two and two the beasts did

disembark,
And so in haste I ran and traced in letters on the

Ark

117

THE BALLAD OF GUM-BOOT BEN

My human name — Ben Smith's the same. And

now I want to float
A syndicate to haul and freight to town that noble

boat."

I met him later in a bar and made a gay remark
Anent an ancient miner and an option on the Ark.
He gazed at me reproachfully, as only topers can;
But what he said I can't repeat — he was a bad old
man.

118

CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE

In the little Crimson Manual it's written plain

and clear
That who would wear the scarlet coat shall say

good-bye to fear;
Shall be a guardian of the right, a sleuth-hound of

the trail —
In the little Crimson Manual there's no such word

as "fair-
Shall follow on though heavens fall, or hell's top-
turrets freeze,
Half round the world, if need there be, on bleeding

hands and knees.
It's duty, duty, first and last, the Crimson Manual

saith ;
The Scarlet Rider makes reply: "It's duty — to

the death."
And so they sweep the solitudes, free men from all

the earth;
And so they sentinel the woods, the wilds that

know their worth;
And so they scour the startled plains and mock

at hurt and pain,

119

CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE

And read their Crimson Manual, and find their

duty plain.
Knights of the lists of unrenown, born of the

frontier's need,
Disdainful of the spoken word, exultant in the

deed;
Unconscious heroes of the waste, proud players

of the game,
Props of the power behind the throne, upholders

of the name:
For thus the Great White Chief hath said, "In

all my lands be peace,"
And to maintain his word he gave his West the

Scarlet Police.

Livid-lipped was the valley, still as the grave of

God;
Misty shadows of mountain thinned into mists

of cloud ;
Corpselike and stark was the land, with a quiet

that crushed and awed,

And the stars of the weird sub-arctic glimmered
over its shroud.

Deep in the trench of the valley two men stationed

the Post,

Seymour and Clancy the reckless, fresh from
the long patrol;

1 20

CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE

Seymour, the sergeant, and Clancy — Clancy who

made his boast

He could cinch like a bronco the Northland,
and cling to the prongs of the Pole.

Two lone men on detachment, standing for law

on the trail;
Undismayed in the vastness, wise with the

wisdom of old —
Out of the night hailed a half-breed telling a pitiful

tale,

"White man starving and crazy on the banks
1 I of the Nordenscold."

Up sprang the red-haired Clancy, lean and eager

of eye;
Loaded the long toboggan, strapped each dog

at its post;
Whirled his lash at the leader; then, with a whoop

and a cry,

Into the Great White Silence faded away like
a ghost.

The clouds were a misty shadow, the hills were

a shadowy mist;

Sunless, voiceless and pulseless, the day was a
dream of woe;

121

CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE

Through the ice-rifts the river smoked and bubbled

and hissed;

Behind was a trail fresh broken, in front the un-
trodden snow.

Ahead of the dogs ploughed Clancy, haloed by

steaming breath;
Through peril of open water, through ache of

insensate cold;
Up rivers wantonly winding in a land affianced

to death,

Till he came to a cowering cabin on the banks
of the Nordenscold.

Then Clancy loosed his revolver, and he strode

through the open door;
And there was the man he sought for, crouching

beside the fire;
The hair of his beard was singeing, the frost on his

back was hoar,

And ever he crooned and chanted as if he never
would tire: —

"/ panned and I panned in the shiny sand, and I

sniped on the river bar;
But I know, I know, that it's down below that

the golden treasures are;

122

CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE

So Til wait and wait till the floods abate, and Til

sink a shaft once more,
And Td like to bet that Til go home yet with a

brass band playing before."

He was nigh as thin as a sliver, and he whined like

a Moose-hide cur;
So Clancy clothed him and nursed him as a

mother nurses a child ;
Lifted him on the toboggan, wrapped him in robes

of fur,

Then with the dogs sore straining started to
face the Wild.

Said the Wild, "I will crush this Clancy, so fearless

and insolent;
For him will I loose my fury, and blind and

buffet and beat;
Pile up my snows to stay him; then when his

strength is spent,

Leap on him from my ambush and crush him
under my feet.

"Him will I ring with my silence, compass him

with my cold ;

Closer and closer clutch him unto mine icy
breast ;

123

CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE

Buffet him with my blizzards, deep in my snows

enfold,

Claiming his life as my tribute, giving my
wolves the rest."

Clancy crawled through the vastness; o'er him

the hate of the Wild;
Full on his face fell the blizzard; cheering his

huskies he ran;
Fighting, fierce-hearted and tireless, snows that

drifted and piled,

With ever and ever behind him singing the
crazy man.

"Sing hey, sing ho, for the ice and snow,

And a heart that's ever merry;
Let us trim and square with a lover's care

(For why should a man be sorry ?)
A grave deep, deep, with the moon a-peep,

A grave in the frozen mould.
Sing hey, sing ho, for the winds that blow,
And a grave deep down in the ice and snow,

A grave in the land of gold.1'

Day after day of darkness, the whirl of the seeth-
ing snows;

Day after day of blindness, the swoop of the
stinging blast;

124

CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE

On through a blur of fury the swing of staggering

blows ;

On through a world of turmoil, empty, inane
and vast.

Night with its writhing storm- whirl, night des-
pairingly black;

Night with its hours of terror, numb and end-
lessly long;
Night with its weary waiting, fighting the shadows

back,

And ever the crouching madman singing his
crazy song.

Cold with its creeping terror, cold with its sudden

clinch ;
Cold so utter you wonder if 'twill ever again be

warm;
Clancy grinned as he shuddered, "Surely it isn't

a cinch

Being wet-nurse to a looney in the teeth of an
arctic storm."

The blizzard passed and the dawn broke, knife-
edged and crystal clear;

The sky was a blue-domed iceberg, sunshine
outlawed away;

125

CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE

Ever by snowslide and ice-rip haunted and hovered

the Fear;

Ever the Wild malignant poised and panted to
slay.

The lead-dog freezes in harness — cut him out of

the team!
The lung of the wheel-dog's bleeding — shoot

him and let him lie!
On and on with the others — lash them until they

scream !

"Pull for your lives, you devils! On! To halt
is to die."

There in the frozen vastness Clancy fought with

his foes;
The ache of the stiffened fingers, the cut of the

snowshoe thong;
Cheeks black-raw through the hood-flap, eyes that

tingled and closed,

And ever to urge and cheer him quavered the
madman's song.

Colder it grew and colder, till the last heat left the

earth,

And there in the great stark stillness the bale
fires glinted and gleamed,

126

CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE

And the Wild all around exulted and shook with

a devilish mirth,

And life was far and forgotten, the ghost of a
joy once dreamed.

Death! And one who defied it, a man of the

Mounted Police;
Fought it there to a standstill long after hope

was gone;

Grinned through his bitter anguish, fought with-
out let or cease,

Suffering, straining, striving, stumbling, strug-
gling on.

Till the dogs lay down in their traces, and rose and

staggered and fell;
Till the eyes of him dimmed with shadows, and

the trail was so hard to see;
Till the Wild howled out triumphant, and the

world was a frozen hell —

Then said Constable Clancy: "I guess that it's
up to me."

Far down the trail they saw him, and his hands

they were blanched like bone;
His face was a blackened horror, from his eye-
lids the salt rheum ran;

127

CLANCY OF THE MOUNTED POLICE

His feet he was lifting strangely, as if they were

made of stone,

But safe in his arms and sleeping he carried
the crazy man.

So Clancy got into Barracks, and the boys made

rather a scene;
And the O. C. called him a hero, and was nice

as a man could be;
But Clancy gazed down his trousers at the place

where his toes had been,

And then he howled like a husky, and sang in
a shaky key:

" When I go back to the old love that's true to the

finger-tips,
I'll say: 'Here's bushels of gold, love,' and I'll kiss

my girl on the lips;
1 It's yours to have and to hold, love.' It's the proud,

proud boy I'll be,
When I go back to the old love that's waited so long

for me."

128

.,

LOST

" Black is the sky, but the land is white —
(0 the wind, the snow and the storm!) —

Father, where is our boy to-night?
Pray to God he is safe and warm."

"Mother, mother, why should you fear?

Safe is he, and the Arctic moon
Over his cabin shines so clear —

Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."

MIt's getting dark awful sudden. Say, this is

mighty queer!
Where in the world have I got to? It's still

and black as a tomb.
I reckoned the camp was yonder, I figured the

trail was here —

Nothing! Just draw and valley packed with
quiet and gloom ;

129

LOST

Snow that comes down like feathers, thick and

gobby and gray;
Night that looks spiteful ugly — seems that I've

lost my way.

"The cold's got an edge like a jackknife — it must

be forty below;
Leastways that's what it seems like — it cuts so

fierce to the bone.
The wind's getting real ferocious; it's heaving and

whirling the snow;
It shrieks with a howl of fury, it dies away to

a moan;
Its arms sweep round like a banshee's, swift and

icily white,
And buffet and blind and beat me. Lord! it's

a hell of a night.

"I'm all tangled up in a blizzard. There's only

one thing to do —
Keep on moving and moving; it's death, it's

death if I rest.
Oh, God! if I see the morning, if only I struggle

through,
I'll say the prayers I've forgotten since I lay on

my mother's breast.
I seem going round in a circle; maybe the camp is

near.

130

LOST

Say! did somebody holler? Was it a light I

saw?
Or was it only a notion? I'll shout, and maybe

they'll hear-
No! the wind only drowns me — shout till my

throat is raw.

"The boys are all round the camp-fire wondering

when I'll be back.
They'll soon be starting to seek me; they'll

scarcely wait for the light.
What will they find, I wonder, when they come to

the end of my track —
A hand stuck out of a snowdrift, frozen and

stiff and white.
That's what they'll strike, I reckon; that's how

they'll find their pard,
A pie-faced corpse in a snowbank — curse you,

don't be a fool!
Play the game to the finish; bet on your very last

card;

Nerve yourself for the struggle. Oh, you coward,
keep cool!

"I'm going to lick this blizzard; I'm going to live

the night.

It can't down me with its bluster — I'm not the
kind to be beat.

LOST

On hands and knees will I buck it; with every

breath will I fight;
It's life, it's life that I fight for — never it seemed

so sweet.
I know that my face is frozen; my hands are

numblike and dead;
But oh, my feet keep a-moving, heavy and hard

and slow;
They're trying to kill me, kill me, the night that's

black overhead,
The wind that cuts like a razor, the whipcord

lash of the snow.
Keep a-moving, a-moving; don't, don't stumble,

you fool!
Curse this snow that's a-piling a-purpose to

block my way.
It's heavy as gold in the rocker, it's white and

fleecy as wool;
It's soft as a bed of feathers, it's warm as a

stack of hay.
Curse on my feet that slip so, my poor tired,

stumbling feet —
I guess they're a job for the surgeon, they feel

so queerlike to lift —
I'll rest them just for a moment — oh, but to rest

is sweet !

The awful wind cannot get me, deep, deep down
in the drift."

132

LOST

"Father, a bitter cry I heard,

Out of the night so dark and wild.

Why is my heart so strangely stirred?
'Twas like the voice of our erring child'1

"Mother, mother, you only heard
A waterfowl in the locked lagoon —

Out of the night a wounded bird —
Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon.1'

Who is it talks of sleeping? I'll swear that some-
body shook
Me hard by the arm for a moment, but how on

earth could it be?
See how my feet are moving — awfully funny they

look-
Moving as if they belonged to a someone that

wasn't me.
The wind down the night's long alley bowls me

down like a pin ;
I stagger and fall and stagger, crawl arm-deep

in the snow.

Beaten back to my corner, how can I hope to win?
And there is the blizzard waiting to give me the
knockout blow.

Oh, I'm so warm and sleepy! No more hunger and

pain.

Just to rest for a moment; was ever rest such
a joy?

133

LOST

Ha! what was that? I'll swear it, somebody

shook me again;
Somebody seemed to whisper: "Fight to the

last, my boy."
Fight! That's right, I must struggle. I know

that to rest means death;
Death, but then what does death mean? — ease

from a world of strife.
Life has been none too pleasant; yet with my

failing breath

Still and still must I struggle, fight for the gift
of life.

Seems that I must be dreaming! Here is the old

home trail;

Yonder a light is gleaming; oh, I know it so well!
The air is scented with clover; the cattle wait by

the rail;

Father is through with the milking; there goes
the supper-bell.

Mother, your boy is crying, out in the night and

cold;

Let me in and forgive me, I'll never be bad
any more:

134

LOST

I'm, oh, so sick and so sorry: please, dear mother,

don't scold —

It's just your boy, and he wants you. . . .
Mother, open the door. . . .

" Father, father, I saw a face
Pressed just now to the window-pane!

Oh, it gazed for a moment's space,
Wild and wan, and was gone again!"

"Mother, mother, you saw the snow
Drifted down from the maple tree

(Oh, the wind that is sobbing so!
Weary and worn and old are we) —

Only the snow and a wounded loon —

Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon"

135

L'ENVOI

We talked of yesteryears, of trails and treasure,

Of men who played the game and lost or won;
Of mad stampedes, of toil beyond all measure,

Of camp-fire comfort when the day was done.
We talked of sullen nights by moon-dogs hauntedt

Of bird and beast and tree, of rod and gun;
Of boat and tent, of hunting-trip enchanted

Beneath the wonder of the midnight sun;
Of bloody -footed dogs that gnawed the traces,

Of prisoned seas, wind-lashed and winter-locked:
The ice-gray dawn was pale upon our faces,

Yet still we filled the cup and still we talked.

The city street was dimmed. We saw the glitter
Of moon-picked brilliants on the virgin snow,

And down the drifted canyon heard the bitter ,
Relentless slogan of the winds of woe.

The city was forgot, and, parka-skirted,

We trod that leagueless land that once we knew;

136

L'ENVOI

We saw stream past, down valleys glacier -girted,

The wolf -worn legions of the caribou
We smoked our pipes, o'er scenes of triumph dwelling;

Of deeds of daring, dire defeats, we talked;
And other tales that lost not in the telling,

Ere to our beds uncertainly we walked.

And so, dear friends, in gentler valleys roaming.

Perhaps, when on my printed page you look,
Your fancies by the firelight may go homing

To that lone land that haply you forsook.
And if perchance you hear the silence calling,

The frozen music of star-yearning heights,
Or, dreaming, see the seines of silver trawling

Across the sky's abyss on vasty nights,
You may recall that sweep of savage splendor,

That land that measures each man at his worth,
And feel in memory, half fierce, half tender,

The brotherhood of men that know the North.

Service, Robert William
Ballads of a Cheechako

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UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY